There have been numerous reports of people deliberately licking products and surfaces in supermarkets and filimg it. These “licking videos” are then often posted on social media sites like TikTok, Snapchat or YouTube for all to see. Deliberately licking and coughing on things in this way, during a pandemic, spreads fear and disgust, along with the health risks. This is what’s known as “consumer terrorism” where dangerous substances...

Experts say the mental health of the frontline healthcare workers may be at risk, because of what they witnessed during their work. Looking out for frontline workers' levels of depression or anxiety will only be part of what is needed. The distress of such work may also trigger the development of many physical health problems that may not be understood and might not be taken seriously by medicine. We have seen this problem befo...

Stalking is a specific form of criminal offence and a recognised social problem. According to the Crime Survey for England & Wales, approximately 20% of females and 10% of males receive unwanted stalking behaviours over their lifetime, and this figure continues to increase annually. The role of the workplace in stalking cases is crucial - many stalkers find their victims through workplaces and are able to elicit information abo...

On June 2nd, 2010, 52-year-old Derrick Bird, an ordinary and down to earth self-employed taxi driver from Rowrah in Cumbria, in the North of England, had started a shooting spree earlier that day. He went on to kill 12 people, and injure 11 others in the space of two hours, before killing himself. This tragedy could not have been prevented, but Bird was not the quiet and pleasant man that many neighbours and friends thought he was....

The size of the work-related stress epidemic has shown no signs of slowing down over the last decade. It continues to grow and has never yet showed any sign of reversing since the mid 1990s when it seemed to begin. I think there is a very obvious source of workplace stress that has been overlooked and under-researched.

Email.

That everyday simple tool we rely on to do our jobs. It's not a coincidence that the workplace stress epi...

I’ve recently come off the back of delivering a 12 week module about mass shooting to undergraduate students. Writing this module and delivering it on a weekly basis for 3 straight months has ben a challenge - not least in it forcing me to develop what I thought my understanding was in the area. Put briefly, my main theoretical take on mass shooters was typically that mostly they were operating under the influence of extreme narcis...

Some questions I have been asked about relationship break ups. Also, if you cannot get over a break up, does it mean you're a 'Crazy Ex Girlfriend'? Is there a “normal” length of time to get over a break-up? Why do some people find it harder than others to get over a relationship ending? Does your general mental health have anything to do with it? How much does the circumstances in which a relationship ends contribute t...

After his arrest in February 2005, Dennis Rader immediately confessed to being the BTK serial murderer who had killed 10 people in the Wichita area of Kansas, between 1974 and 1991. This is the third look at the BTK case for this podcast.

Rader’s ready admission to being behind those murders, and to also being a prolific prowler, stalker and house-breaker, led to many observers of the case hastily labelling him a psychopath. This co...

There seems to have been a recent development in online animal cruelty, where various influencers and a broader cohort of ordinary social media users, seem to be willing to engage in animal cruelty and then post up footage of their animals and pets receiving what could most charitably be described by some as tough love, or deliberate mistreatment by others. Such cruelty is still viewed by psychologists as severe warning signs of ps...

In this podcast I want to ask if there is any scope for using clinical hypnosis in the modern working world as a way to help us all improve our lives, overcome any difficulties we may have, and to generally change our behaviours towards the more healthy and happy. If it works, why are we not using it more? In this age of mindfulness and mental heath first aid, there has never been a netter time to explore this form of psychological...

On the evening of Friday 22nd July 2016, there was a multiple casualty and fatality shooting at the Olympia Shopping Mall in Munich. Eighteen year-old David Ali Sonboly, German born from parents of Iranian descent, opened fire on teenagers in a McDonald's restaurant before shooting at bystanders in the street outside and then in the mall itself. Nine people were killed and a further thirty-six others were injured. The role of e...